Friday Sermon: Palestine in Ebullition 3: The Rage of Hate

By Babatunde Jose

The tragedy of history is geography. Power is the cartographer. Ancient ghosts haunt blood-soaked lands where war determines tenancy – Ravi Shankar

Hate is a mighty strong emotion. This mental venom can pollute the spirit, poison the soul and seep into all relationships. Anyone who has found themselves wrapped up in the arms of hate knows how damaging and mind-consuming it can become.

Our hatred may send us into deep depression and despair but more often than not, the more severe the disruption of our lives, the stronger the hate and the stronger our feelings that we need to act to make things right. Hate is in part what keeps us going when our lives have been put on hold.

Hate is based on issues of power and control. Hate comes from the idea that certain people can or should have power and control over others. These ideas come from our history where certain people took power over others. These ideas are built into systems that help certain people keep their power.

A study from counseling called, Coping with Hatred, suggests that setting boundaries, trusting your gut, and practicing self-care can be very impactful in the way you preserve your feelings towards others. Another great way to deal with this impossible emotion is to simply avoid generalizing.

The truth is, both the New and Old Testaments teach love and both teach hate, the proper form of hate — the only form of hate that is spiritually acceptable:“Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: He preserveth the souls of His saints; He delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.” (Psalm 97:10).

Hatred or hate is an intense negative emotional response towards certain people, things or ideas, usually related to opposition or revulsion toward something. Hatred is often associated with intense feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust.

Some common synonyms of hate are abhor, abominate, detest, and loathe. While all these words mean “to feel strong aversion or intense dislike for,” hate implies an emotional aversion often coupled with enmity or malice.

A true warrior does not hate. Hate is a luxury that a warrior cannot afford. To hate is to have “a feeling of intense or passionate dislike for something or someone.” Anger and hatred have a way of clouding our minds and distorting our judgments. Just as it clouds the judgment of a people out to avenge a wrong done to them. President Joe Biden warned Israel: “. . . . while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.” It however, fell on deaf ears, due to hate.

According to Nietzsche’s philosophical physiology, hatred is greatest where struggle and the resistance to assimilation are greatest.

Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God has forgiven you.” In this sentence, Paul has summarized the biblical message: that we are to be kind, compassionate and forgiving. In other places, the gospel is summarized in other ways.

Unfortunately the people we are addressing today do not read the new testament neither do they believe in Jesus as their master and savior. Their God Yahweh is a God of war. He led his people to war against those whose land and property He has appropriated for them. He leads them in war against their perceived enemies, the Philistines, Jebusites, Moabites, and all those tribes that inhabit Patriarchal Palestine.

In the Book of Amos, Chapter 1, Verses 6 and 7 ‘the Lord says, “Gaza has sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave her unpunished anymore. For she sent my people into exile, selling them as slaves in Edom. So I will set fire to the walls of Gaza, and all her forts shall be destroyed. I will kill the people of Ashdod, and destroy Ekron and the King of Ashkelon, all Philistines left will perish.”

That is generational hate. Which shows in the attitude of today’s Jewish people towards their neighbors.

Yet, in Leviticus 19:18 the same Lord said: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge . . .. ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

The quest for revenge can be observed on the Palestinian side too as a result of a century of wrongs and being on the receiving end of an apartheid system. Young Palestinians today are the grandchildren of oppressed and wounded parents and grandparents. They were born into the system and remain in the system.

And whereas anger might be a reaction to a broad range of negative feelings, more intense hate is often most strongly rooted in shame, fear, and humiliation. Like anger, it is a reaction to a perceived threat, not just to specific aspects of our comfort or safety but rather to our entire well-being.

In his book Hatred: The Psychological Descent Into Violence, professor of clinical psychiatry Willard Gaylin suggests that hatred is a disease of the mind. Hatred is also a disease of the human heart, soul and body. Hatred is a complex process that attacks humankind and becomes a community disease.

It is like rage in as much as its lives at the extremity of baleful human emotions, but unlike rage that suddenly pounces and erupts, hatred is a slow broth of emotional bile that lurks, stalks, and simmers. While rage acts, hatred waits. Nonetheless, hatred by virtue of its passive nature belies its toxic effects.

It is human nature to hate him whom you have injured. No doubt, the Jews have injured the Palestinians, big time. And it has metastasized into hatred and abhorrence.

Unlike anger, there is no physiological pattern that is characteristic of hate, because hate is a long-term experience. Someone can do something to make you immediately angry, but usually, you need more information to hate someone.

Hate makes you strong. Hatred provides the armor and fuel to harden you. The desire to exact vengeance upon the enemy that had done you wrong, forces you to push through all kinds of hardship, suffering and adversity.

Is hate learned or innate? Evolutionary psychology states that every person in every culture is born with innate mechanisms that make them capable of hatred and prejudice. Nature made us ready to hate our enemy if need be and equipped us with the tools to identify who is an enemy and who is a friend.

Is hatred then a disease? Marshall Marinker, a British physician and researcher, defined disease as a pathological process, most often physical, sometimes undetermined in origin. In his book Hatred: The Psychological Descent Into Violence, professor of clinical psychiatry Willard Gaylin suggests that hatred is a disease of the mind.

In its purest form hate is devoid of emotion or passion. There is no anger or pride. The very emotion removes all humanity and commonality with the object of one’s hatred. Hatred is complex, discrete, involves destructive intent, is contagious to individuals, groups and communities and is often the result of exposure to harm. It is the result of chronic frustration leading to episodes of rage that go unaddressed.

The Pyramid of hate shows biased behaviors, growing in complexity from the bottom to the top. Although the behaviors at each level negatively impact individuals and groups, as one moves up the pyramid, the behaviors have more life-threatening consequences. Like a pyramid, the upper levels are supported by the lower levels. If people or institutions treat behaviors on the lower levels as being acceptable or “normal,” it results in the behaviors at the next level becoming more accepted. In response to the questions of the world community about where the hate of genocide comes from, the Pyramid of Hate demonstrates that the hate of genocide is built upon the acceptance of behaviors described in the lower levels of the pyramid.

The Pyramid of Hate presents a visual image to demonstrate how the seeds of hate, once planted, can quickly grow from biased ideas to hate violence. Bias-motivated violence, in addition to genocide , represent mere tips of an iceberg; an end result that is seen. Beneath what we can see lie attitudes, behaviors, actions and inaction’s that, if unchecked, create the conditions necessary for that end, tragic result. Unchecked, those attitudes and behaviors become normalized, with the potential to escalate. This in essence is the problem of the Middle East today.

They have turned a deep seated animosity against each other into hatred capable of degenerating into genocide.

Genocide

The act or intent to deliberately and systematically annihilate an entire people. This is the stage of the relationship in occupied Palestine today. If care is not taken a wider conflagration might erupt that would have wider ramifications beyond the Middle East.

Even outside the war zone hate persists because it is contagious: Joseph M. Czuba, 71, a resident of Chicago, has been detained and charged with murder and hate crimes after it was claimed that he fatally stabbed a 6-year-old kid and critically injured his mother. The victims, a Palestinian family, were attacked because of their religion and because of the continuing conflict between Hamas and Israel.

In conclusion, I like to quote my friend Tatalo Alamu: “The kind of mayhem and murder that we have witnessed in the Gaza Strip is a weighty reproach and rebuke to humanity and the pretensions to being on a higher scale of evolution. It questions our right to rationality and superior reason. Not even animals slaughter themselves on such a scale and scope. They will never acquire the capacity in the first instance.

“Neither is the resort to primitive identity politics and amoral confraternity so beloved by the West and its principal leadership which allows them to overlook and quietly condone Israel’s hubristic excesses in the pursuit of its right to self-determination. It is obvious that the West is still haunted by the debt of atavistic obligation to the Israeli people after centuries of persecution which culminated in Hitler’s genocide.” Tatalo on Sunday. Nation Newspaper.